......as the state broadcaster falls foul of misreporting by a staffer within its own ranks
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson says the New Zealand public has been let down after pro-Russian elements were added to reports of the war in the Ukraine without senior management realising.
This acknowledgement comes after readers noticed the text of a Reuters story about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine published on RNZ had been changed.
The disclosures about what has happened is likely to prompt some Point of Order readers to ask: what do senior RNZ managers do if they don’t listen to RNZ bulletins or keep an eye on the content of web reports. There may even be a few, had they ever worked with editors, who understood this was part of the job.
RNZ’s boss Paul Thompson says only that he is sorry that “pro-Kremlin garbage” made its way into the stories at issue.
In one report triggered by the smell around this garbage, an RNZ digital reporter who added pro-Russian views to Reuter stories has said he edited “that way” for several years, without ever being queried.
“I subbed several stories that way over the past number of years,” journalist Michael Hall told Checkpoint.
“In fact since I started RNZ and … I have done that for five years and nobody has tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was doing anything wrong.”
Speaking to Checkpoint on Monday, Thompson said Hall had not yet been fired, but has been placed on leave while an investigation was taking place.
“What’s happened is a serious breach of our editorial standards … we’ve let our audience down, our Ukrainian community down, but I do need to make sure there is a robust process,” Thompson told Checkpoint host Lisa Owen.
“We’ve got enough challenges on our plate at the moment, I don’t want to compound that by getting ahead of a fair process.”
No-one from RNZ upper management had offered their resignations as a result of the incident, Thompson confirmed.
Thompson said senior staff from RNZ’s web team, as well as the news team, were conducting the audit of stories.
“But the web team is the team that didn’t pick up on the problems with this man’s copy in the first place … so to use your language, Paul, they are marking their own homework and being in charge of the audit,” Owen told him.
Surely, an independent inquiry is required, if others are injecting “garbage” into reports on international affairs, it is time to identity them. That would require a ministerial intervention.
Thompson did confirm the external review he will be establishing would be entirely independent to the organisation and the finding of the review would go straight to RNZ’s board – not to him.
Findings would then be released to the public to keep everything fully transparent – as RNZ was doing with its current audit.
After fronting one of his own journalists live on air, Thompson has also revealed the magnitude of the task ahead for the public broadcaster, saying “what will probably end up being thousands of stories” will have to be combed.
The scandal broke when RNZ published a story last week containing a pro-Russian view of the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The original story was supplied by the international news agency, Reuters, and later appeared on RNZ – but with edits to include a pro-Russian view.
Speaking to Nine to Noon days after the edits were first discovered, Thompson accepted there had been a serious breach of standards and issued a string of apologies.
He said thousands of articles would likely be searched “with a fine-tooth comb”, with 250 already looked at.
“This also raises issues around our editing process for online news,” Thompson said. “Clearly our editing systems are not as robust as they need to be.
“It is so disappointing, I’m gutted, it’s painful … We have to get to the bottom of how it happened.”
Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan read an example of what had been reported to her chief executive before asking him:
“That is outright propaganda, that is demonstrably, factually incorrect and how could it be published on the public media organisation’s website without anyone seeing it?”
In response, Thompson said Ryan had “summarised it really well”.
“I do want to take the opportunity to apologise, to our audiences and to the public of New Zealand who absolutely rely on us to be a trusted source of news and information. We’ve let them down.
“Also, to the people who work at RNZ, 99.999% of us come to work every day to do trusted work and I just really, really feel, and feel a big responsibility and apologise to them.”
He apologised, too, to the Ukrainian community.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
RNZ’s boss Paul Thompson says only that he is sorry that “pro-Kremlin garbage” made its way into the stories at issue.
In one report triggered by the smell around this garbage, an RNZ digital reporter who added pro-Russian views to Reuter stories has said he edited “that way” for several years, without ever being queried.
“I subbed several stories that way over the past number of years,” journalist Michael Hall told Checkpoint.
“In fact since I started RNZ and … I have done that for five years and nobody has tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was doing anything wrong.”
Speaking to Checkpoint on Monday, Thompson said Hall had not yet been fired, but has been placed on leave while an investigation was taking place.
“What’s happened is a serious breach of our editorial standards … we’ve let our audience down, our Ukrainian community down, but I do need to make sure there is a robust process,” Thompson told Checkpoint host Lisa Owen.
“We’ve got enough challenges on our plate at the moment, I don’t want to compound that by getting ahead of a fair process.”
No-one from RNZ upper management had offered their resignations as a result of the incident, Thompson confirmed.
Thompson said senior staff from RNZ’s web team, as well as the news team, were conducting the audit of stories.
“But the web team is the team that didn’t pick up on the problems with this man’s copy in the first place … so to use your language, Paul, they are marking their own homework and being in charge of the audit,” Owen told him.
Surely, an independent inquiry is required, if others are injecting “garbage” into reports on international affairs, it is time to identity them. That would require a ministerial intervention.
Thompson did confirm the external review he will be establishing would be entirely independent to the organisation and the finding of the review would go straight to RNZ’s board – not to him.
Findings would then be released to the public to keep everything fully transparent – as RNZ was doing with its current audit.
After fronting one of his own journalists live on air, Thompson has also revealed the magnitude of the task ahead for the public broadcaster, saying “what will probably end up being thousands of stories” will have to be combed.
The scandal broke when RNZ published a story last week containing a pro-Russian view of the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The original story was supplied by the international news agency, Reuters, and later appeared on RNZ – but with edits to include a pro-Russian view.
Speaking to Nine to Noon days after the edits were first discovered, Thompson accepted there had been a serious breach of standards and issued a string of apologies.
He said thousands of articles would likely be searched “with a fine-tooth comb”, with 250 already looked at.
“This also raises issues around our editing process for online news,” Thompson said. “Clearly our editing systems are not as robust as they need to be.
“It is so disappointing, I’m gutted, it’s painful … We have to get to the bottom of how it happened.”
Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan read an example of what had been reported to her chief executive before asking him:
“That is outright propaganda, that is demonstrably, factually incorrect and how could it be published on the public media organisation’s website without anyone seeing it?”
In response, Thompson said Ryan had “summarised it really well”.
“I do want to take the opportunity to apologise, to our audiences and to the public of New Zealand who absolutely rely on us to be a trusted source of news and information. We’ve let them down.
“Also, to the people who work at RNZ, 99.999% of us come to work every day to do trusted work and I just really, really feel, and feel a big responsibility and apologise to them.”
He apologised, too, to the Ukrainian community.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
2 comments:
How shocking that anything supportive of Russia's legitimate intervention of Ukraine's corrupt Fascist regime should enter into the relentless propaganda of the US inspired garbage we are spoon fed each day by our captured, limp-wristed miserable and pathetic excuses for news writers 'woking' for the braindead Labour Party. This country has descended into the depths of the utmost corruption and there really is no hope of meaningful recovery.
Charles, I agree except for the no hope bit. There is always hope but the hoped-for recovery would be painful. Starting with a government of chaos and disruption after October. Poor economic conditions will help to stir some action but we need some decent leadership on pressing concerns.
MC
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